Everybody’s Talking About Jamie (UK Tour) Review

A little bit of glitter in the January grey.

We saw Everybody’s Talking About Jamie at @mayflower_theatre and it was just beautiful.

With our energy levels flagging and the skies gloomier than ever we jumped at the chance to inject some feel-good warmth into our 2024.

Everybody’s Talking About Jamie was an amazing musical full of tears, laughter and a pitch of sass to knock us out of our January slump.

Based on a true story, Everybody’s Talking About Jamie tells the story of Jamie New (played by Ivano Turco). Upon turning 16, he tells people he wants to be a Drag Queen and embarks on his quest to be his truest self, with a goal to attend his high school Prom wearing a dress.

He faces the barriers like the judgemental absent father, homophobic school bully and the bureaucratic teacher. Jamie’s ambitions are met with bigoted opinions but ultimately he manages to overcome them with the help of some of his friends and even changing the minds of some of his antagonists.

I loved the relationship Jamie had with his on-stage mum Margaret New (played by Rebecca McKinnis), which lead to some of the stand-out scenes of the show. Including the tear-jerker ‘He’s My Boy’.

Another golden moment was his best friend Pritti Pasha (played by Talia Palamathanan) singing ‘It Means Beautiful’ to Jamie, which is one of my favourite songs from the show.

Big songs ‘And You Don’t Even Know It’ and title number ‘Everybody’s Talking About Jamie’ filled the auditorium with hand clapping and toe-tapping. During the more poignant ballads like ‘The Wall In My Head’ you could hear a pin drop, a testament to how the cast held the audience in the palm of their hand for over 2 hours.

Not only did this musical pack a really powerful emotional punch. It was also full of joy: the dancing was fun, the script was full of hilarious one-liners and fruity language, littered with popular culture references and the stage was constantly evolving seamlessly.